Latest IT delays a 'catastrophe'

Just two of the 22 acute trusts which promised in June to implement NHS Connecting for Health patient administration systems by the end of October have fully done so. Two more have partially introduced the systems.

Just two of the 22 acute trusts which promised in June to implement NHS Connecting for Health patient administration systems by the end of October have fully done so. Two more have partially introduced the systems.

In June, local service providers Fujitsu, Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) and Accenture told the Commons public accounts committee that the PAS implementations would be completed by the end of last month. London service provider BT had no PASs planned in that period.

Richard Bacon MP, who requested the information, described the current position as 'a little short of a catastrophe compared with what they said they were going to do'.

This week, six trusts said they intend to implement PASs by the end of this year, but six more said they could not confirm a date.

Some of those unable to provide a date are close to finishing the work. Winchester and Eastleigh Healthcare trust, part of the Mid-Hampshire deployment, last week intended to go live this week, but on Monday said that software problems had caused a delay.

A CfH spokesperson said most work in the Southern cluster trusts scheduled to go live by now had been completed, but changes to Cerner's software meant the implementation schedule 'has become congested and replanning is under way'.

East Lancashire trust and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals trust are revamping or extending PAS systems they already own instead of implementing one from iSoft.

Murray Bywater, managing director of health IT analyst Silicon Bridge Research, said that the lack of progress by Accenture, which in September announced the transfer of most of its national programme work to CSC, may have been exacerbated by its decision to wait for iSoft's delayed Lorenzo software. CSC used iSoft's existing iPM software in its implementations and will upgrade to Lorenzo later.

Mr Bywater said: 'Trying to release the staff to do this work will be a big challenge.' He added that foundation trusts may start considering whether they could not do better on their own.

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